In desperate need of help for EPQ novel!

Greetings , all! I'm writing a book for my Extended Project Qualification and I was wondering if any of you would be so kind as to give me your opinion on an excert. This is only from the first draft, so it's not perfect. It's a steampunk adventure about a girl who runs away on a pirate airship and finds herself in all kinds of strange situations! Just so you know, if you leave a comment here it could end up in my essay and presentation, but nothing more than that. Thanks for your time! Here's the excert from chapter 3 where the main character is discovered on the ship by a pirate who can't quite call himself a pirate:

    Lenora’s head span wildly as she ran, having to look back every few seconds to convince herself it actually had happened. How could everything she knew have just… dissapeared? Within a few seconds…

    She didn’t know it, but if Lenora had waited just a few more minutes, Charlotte would have arrived and taken her home. Lenora didn’t want to go home anyway, or at least she didn’t think she did… Going home meant facing reality, and if she faced reality, she would find out for sure if her mother, sister, William or in fact almost everybody she knew were dead, and then she knew she wouldn’t last long, even with Charlotte’s help, because Lenora could not bear the guilt of the last thing she’d done before everybody…

    No, she had to run away. Charlotte would be fine for a while; she could even come back to find her once she knew what was going on. She needed to get out of London into a world where nobody recognised her.

    She turned and headed for the river, and the first ship she saw, nobody was watching, so she climbed into it and hid.

    Everything would maybe have been fine… she might even have had chance to change her mind or beg for the help of the crew, but there was one small complication.

    The shock finally got the better of her and she collapsed, helpless in the strange ship…  perhaps it would have given her hope if she had thought to look at it’s name.

***

   In a small tavern not too far from where they’d left the ship (although the Captain had sounded like he was joking about leaving them behind, they weren’t about to take any chances), a select few of the crew’s finest drunkards staggered out of the tavern singing shanties at the top of their voices, complete with regular intervals for hiccups. Lukas Hart followed, trying to look as if he were enjoying himself, and not trying to stay sober for fear of a keelhaul, which was actually more probable than it sounded.

    “O, fourteen men on a dead man’s chest!” they sang, their drunken laughs echoing shamelessly through the streets.

    “Yo ho ho and a bottle o’ rum!” Jack Jessey interrupted with a voice that would make any musician squirm; and then he caught a glimpse of Lukas’s sober face and laughed, “Where to next then, Lads? I know a place down that alley called Roses for the Dead, heard of it?” At this he winked, which meant that it was a damn good time to make an excuse and go back to the ship.

    “Sorry mate, don’t believe in it.” Lukas shrugged. “Neither does Sal I hear.”

    Lukas hoped that mentioning Sal would sober up his friend a few moments to think twice about it. He could see that it had worked, just about, but it seemed that the amount of alcohol Jack had consumed easily won over his morals.

    “Suit yourself.”  Jack said with a shrug, and marched off in the opposite direction.

    Nicely handled, Lukas told his brain for some reason, True genius there. Jack wouldn’t have even the most unlikely chance with Saleen at this rate. What was the point anyway?

    That was a stupid question. The point was, friends or not, Lukas owed Jack, he owed him his life. The least he could do was help him out with a woman, albeit Saleen. The seemingly simple task had turned out a little more difficult than he’d expected…

    He must have been really drunk to have even considered trying.

    He thought that was why he tripped over the moment he boarded the ship, falling face first onto the deck. It was a good thing the place was deserted, because if somebody like Jack had been watching, he wouldn’t hear the end of it for months at least.

    It was only at this point that he realised he’d tripped over something on the floor, rather than his own feet. Something big; he couldn’t figure out whether this piece of information was good or really very bad.

    Slowly, he sat up, and looked at the spot where the ‘thing’ had been… Accept it wasn’t a ‘thing’, it was a girl.

    Well naturally, his first reaction was is she breathing? (was this healthy for a man of his occupation?) He pressed two fingers to her throat, and was relieved to find a steady pulse beating under her skin. He sighed, sat back, and took a long, confused look at her.

    She was somehow beautiful.

    She had hair the colour of ravens feathers falling out of what might once have been an elegant up do, and porcelain pale skin, although it was smeared with black makeup from her eyes, like she’d been crying. She also had on what was once a magnificent, and very expensive looking red ball gown, although it was all torn and mud stained.

    What was a girl like that doing on this ship? She belonged on some sort of posh private floating hotel somewhere.

    The sound of falling books below deck brought Lukas back down to earth again, and he was almost relieved to hear the familiar Indian accent cursing softly.

    “Sal!” He called, after the cursing had quietened to a soft buzz.

    There was a moment of silence, and then Saleen’s voice shouted back, “Well done, Lukas, you finally got the first syllable! Keep at it and by the end of next year, you might even be able to pronounce my whole name!”

    “Funny, Saleen. Sarcastic comment of the day-” Lukas began to say hurriedly, but Saleen, who could not see the situation at hand right now, cut him off.

    “Oh, I have so many more where that came from!” She called in a dangerously singsong voice, which usually meant she’d been up to no good, or just wanted you to think so.

    Lukas gave up and yelled impatiently, “Sal! We have an unconscious girl up here, some help would be nice!”

    There was a moment where all that could be heard was the distinct sound of Saleen’s heeled boots climbing the short ladder up on to the main deck.

    “If you think I’m going to clean up any more of Jack’s mess you’re wrongly mistaken.”  She said as she crossed the length of the deck without really registering the sight before her.

    “Good.” Said Lukas with a sigh, “I’m not asking you to.”

    Saleen’s jaw must have dropped to the earth’s core and started digging when she finally looked at the body Lukas was kneeling over.

    “…Well she’s definitely not a whore…” She managed to say in a sort of shocked murmur. She didn’t take long to compose herself though, before she rolled her eyes and said, “Fine. So long as she’s an innocent I’ll help.”

    Not that he’d been here long, but Lukas knew Saleen well enough to know that ‘I’ll help’ actually translated to English as ‘you carry, I’ll talk’. Then again, Saleen was the brains, even if it wasn’t a hard title to get on this ship.

    Lukas braced himself and picked the girl up, finding that, to his shock, she was incredibly heavy. Granted she was fairly tall, but she was also fairly thin and dainty… she just weighed an extra half her weight in skirt.

    “It’s a woman’s burden my dear.” Saleen said, letting out a giggle she didn’t bother to stifle, “A necessary evil.”

    Lukas sighed, guessing that he’d never understand and didn’t want to. He’d carried heavier anyway, so he managed to carry the girl down to Saleen’s cabin, and lay her down on the disused spare bed.

    Saleen lit a fresh stick of incense on her desk, which slowly spread a misty lavender cloud through the room, and began noisily searching through her piled up books for something or other.

    “She must have got out of that place just in time.” She said, casting another glance back at the girl.

     He was sure it made him sound utterly clueless but Lukas had to ask the obvious question. It didn’t really matter, everyone looked clueless to Saleen anyway. “How do you know that’s where she came from?”

    “Lukas, just look at her.” Saleen replied, with one dark eyebrow raised into an arch, “It’s obvious where she came from. It’s just finding out who she is, which should become clear as soon as she wakes up.”

    “She’s going to be alright isn’t she?” He asked after a moment. She looked so… lifeless there, and he didn’t like to see it.

    “She’ll be fine. “  Saleen said dismissively, “My incense will probably have her up sooner or later.”

    “So long as you’re sure.” Lukas replied, although he didn’t quite take his eyes off the strange girl.

    Saleen paused from her rummaging and looked at him curiously, a knowing smile curling the corner of her red lips. “You’re sweet you know, not like our typical sailor types.” She said in a way that Lukas thought was supposed to sound nice. Saleen didn’t do nice.

    He supposed now was a good time to leave, and so turned away to head back to his own cabin.

    “I don’t know what Jack sees in you.” She added just before he shut the door.

    Saleen finally found the newspaper she’d been looking for and opened it up to the front page. Sure enough, she’d been right (then, when wasn’t she?). There was their stowaway in the picture, and Saleen’s guesses of her character were right on every count. Rich girl, dodgy looking engagement, the usual. She had to hand it to her though, it took guts to run away from that life. Now where was the name…?

    “Lenora Lacey.”  Saleen said finally.